Despite abundant new snowfall, traffic to the high country over the Presidents Day weekend was down significantly as compared to that holiday weekend in 2020.
For the four-day weekend that began ran last Friday and concluded Monday night, 152,999 vehicles passed through the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels, a decrease of 16% compared to the same four-day period in 2020. Presidents Day weekend is typically the busiest of the ski season.
While ski areas are limiting capacity by requiring reservations because of COVID-19, the Presidents Day drop was surprising because it was much bigger than the decrease seen only four weeks earlier on the four-day Martin Luther King Day weekend. That weekend saw 169,031 vehicles pass through the tunnels, a drop of 3.2% as compared to 2020.
A series of storms this month has created much-improved ski conditions at most Colorado resorts after a dismal start to the season, but frigid temperatures in metro Denver and the mountains may have contributed to reduced skier traffic last weekend.
“It was a good holiday weekend, but not quite as busy as we expected it to be,” said John Sellers, marketing and communications director for the Loveland ski area. “The snow has been great the last few weeks, so I think the cold temperatures in the Front Range were definitely a factor.”
CDOT figures also show traffic was down 8.9% in December, compared to December 2019, and down 7.8% in January, compared to January 2020.